


things could be stranger (but I don't know how)

by bysine



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Aliens, Canon Compliant, Kim Wonpil is an alien, M/M, Salt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27929311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bysine/pseuds/bysine
Summary: Wonpil had sat them down, a month before their debut, and told them.“I am from another planet,” he had said.“Ha ha,” Jae had replied, “tell us something new.”---The one where Wonpil is an alien (and it’s canon).
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33





	things could be stranger (but I don't know how)

**Author's Note:**

> A DISCLAIMER: I do not believe that Kim Wonpil is an extraterrestrial and do not intend to suggest that at all. This is a work of Fiction.
> 
> A 2ND, LESS URGENT DISCLAIMER: I have tried my best to research Day6's tours &c &c but if not all of it fits within the Kim Wonpil, Alien narrative then so be it.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, after so many years. Wonpil was _Wonpil_ , after all, and Younghyun had had plenty of time to get used to everything this entailed.

The uneven spurts of energy he sometimes got, when he’d bother Jae or Dowoon endlessly until he was appropriately banished. How half a minute later he’d be curled up somewhere looking contemplative, scribbling some thought or phrase into a notebook. The way he’d get caught up in silent hysterics about a private joke shared with no-one, wheezing as he swatted at Younghyun’s sleeve trying to tell him. That impish, innocent look on his face every time he hatched some sort of plan, whether a complicated cross between a practical joke and birthday celebration, or the simple joy of eating couque d’asse undetected in Sungjin’s room. 

Then there was the way there was salt fucking _everywhere_ , all the time. He’d thought it had been weird, back in the day, when he’d visited JYP PD-nim’s office and seen packets of it — the kind that came with _samgyetang_ delivery — stacked up on his desk, right next to the coffee. But nothing had prepared him for moving into the dorms and seeing Wonpil at two in the morning, standing in a darkened kitchen licking salt crystals off a teaspoon like it was the most delicious thing in the universe. 

And then there was the way the top of Wonpil’s head would sometimes light up when he was excited about something — just a faint but steady glow like someone had switched on a tiny spotlight made of sunbeams right above him. How, back when Wonpil and Sungjin had been roommates, Sungjin had once thrown several towels on top of Wonpil’s head in the middle of the night because he’d been glowing too much in the dark. 

“I was having a nice dream,” Wonpil had said the next morning, having survived the smothering. “It was about music.”

(There was a reason he always wore caps and hoodies at song camps.) 

Wonpil had sat them down, a month before their debut, and told them.

“I am from another planet,” he had said. 

“Ha ha,” Jae had replied, “tell us something new.” 

“No, really I am,” Wonpil had said, and opened his mouth to unleash an otherworldly sound, which was like a polyphonic combination of a whale sound and the shivering harmonics of a dozen bells being rung. 

Then he had shut his mouth, and the sound had ended. 

“That was, ‘stop teasing Dowoonie’,” Wonpil had added by way of translation, in the face of their stunned silence. 

Later, after the inevitable questioning that had followed, Younghyun had found Wonpil sitting on their laundry balcony with his knees curled up to his chest. 

“Did you only tell us because you wanted us to stop ribbing Dowoon for talking about his ‘alien _chingu_ ' from elementary school?” 

Wonpil had turned to look at Younghyun, and his face in the moonlight (or, probably, just the light from the opposite building) had looked so beautiful and remote that Younghyun had wondered at how he hadn’t noticed, before. 

He had shrugged. “I guess.”

“Please don’t tell me you’ve violated some sort of Starfleet Prime Directive by telling us,” Younghyun had joked as he sat down beside him. 

Wonpil had given him a blank look. 

“From _Star Trek_ ,” Younghyun had explained. “But — never mind.”

“I haven’t exceeded my mission parameters, if that’s what you’re asking,” Wonpil had said softly. Even then, Younghyun had noticed something different in the way he said it; that sweet, bright inflection now absent and replaced with something more solemn, almost authoritative. “And I requested wider latitude as one of my terms for coming here.” 

“I… see,” Younghyun had said. Earlier, Wonpil had explained to them that he was on some sort of census taking expedition (“There’s _more_ of you?” Junhyeok had yelped), except there had, apparently, been complications of some sort. Something about space debris disrupting the interstellar signal for twenty years and Park Jinyoung PD-nim being terrible at his actual job as the only communications technician deployed to Earth.

Until that interstellar signal was reestablished, Wonpil would have no way of finishing his mission and returning home. 

“Were you afraid?” Younghyun had asked. “Coming all the way out here, from… _there_.” (Wonpil had said the name of his planet several times but it had had the unpronounceable quality of light and noise.) 

Wonpil had glanced over at Younghyun, curious and surprised. “What a strange question,” he had said. Then he had turned and buried his nose in his knees in a movement so familiar and Wonpil-like that he hadn’t seemed alien at all. 

\---

It was easy to forget, that is, until Wonpil returned to the dorm one day, solemn and purposeful, and said: “I am ready to complete my mission.”

“We’re about to go on tour, what do you mean _complete your mission_?” said Sungjin, who was in the middle of supervising Dowoon’s cleaning of the living room. Younghyun, who had come out of his room for a glass of water, had been in imminent danger of being commandeered into tidying up. 

Wonpil blinked at Sungjin. “The tour is part of the mission,” he said, as if it were self-evident. 

“I thought hyung’s mission was to fix some space signal,” said Dowoon, from where he was half-crouched by the sofa trying to dry-wipe the floor underneath it. “Wasn’t that why PD-nim moved us into the new company building?” 

“Yes, the array is in place,” said Wonpil, “but to reestablish an interstellar signal that will reach the Consciousness will require more than just the two of us.”

Wonpil had explained the Consciousness to them once. This had been shortly after _Daydream_ had been released, one evening when their manager hyung had been out and they’d taken the opportunity to recklessly barbecue meat in the living room with all the windows thrown open. 

The whole discussion had started because Wonpil had been trying to express how different his actual form was from his human body, but there had been some things that apparently did not translate into human language.

“You don’t have tentacles, though, do you,” Jae had said, narrowing his eyes. “I’ve seen you eat octopus.” 

“It is not like in your movies,” Wonpil had said, having recently sat through _Men in Black_ on television with a look of pinched disapproval. “If we are not sent on missions, we spend phases in which we are more of a… a consciousness, of sorts.”

Sungjin who had been silently and intently barbecuing more meat, had looked up. “So… you don’t have a body?” 

“I do have one,” Wonpil had replied, “but given that time is not experienced linearly in the Consciousness, it is less… material than a human body.” 

Younghyun had imagined, hysterically, a blob of lightbulb-looking beings just glowing through the space time continuum together.

“Doraemon-hyung said the same thing,” Dowoon had said. “He also said he hadn’t been in the Consciousness for many phases, because he’s been on earth. But he said the joining of consciousnesses produces the energy to travel the stars.”

Younghyun had wondered, not for the first and definitely not the last time, at the sheer weirdness that must have been Dowoon’s childhood.

Wonpil, on the other hand, had turned curiously to Dowoon. “Tell me again who exactly this Doraemon-hyung is?”

“Are you saying though,” Jae had interrupted, mouth full of meat, “that your alien race journeys through space using the _power of love_?”

“Whose consciousnesses have you uh, joined with,” Younghyun had asked. 

Wonpil had frowned. “It’s not like that,” he had said, before returning to carefully wrapping his ssam like he’d decided the conversation was over. 

“Let me get this straight,” said Jae now, emerging from the bathroom where he’d clearly been hiding from Sungjin’s cleanliness campaign. “You’re going to distribute these … transmitter things to other aliens all over the world, then pick a date to turn them on at the same time, so that you can then send a giant beam of information into space?” 

“More or less,” said Wonpil. “We will deliver the census results that way, and confirm that the planet is still not technologically advanced enough to be hostile.”

“That’s a relief,” said Sungjin dryly.

“Yes it is,” said Wonpil, with no trace of irony. “This has been long overdue. Several deadlines to report had come and gone by the time I was deployed. But Specialist Park—” referring, of course, to JYP PD-nim, “— has finally fabricated a working transmitter model,” he added, pulling something out of his pocket. “We tested them today.”

“Hyung,” said Dowoon. “Isn’t that our concert light band?” 

“Yes, to humans it is,” said Wonpil, strapping the light band onto his wrist. “But look.” 

The top of his head had lit up a brilliant green, in contrast to the usual yellow.

“It amplifies my pathway to the Consciousness,” Wonpil said serenely, gazing up at the ceiling and tilting his head from one side to another to watch how the light followed him. 

For a long moment they all stood and apprehended this.

“That is going to be so inconvenient onstage,” said Sungjin.

“E.T. phone home…” said Jae, in a strangled wheeze, “except the phone is a second-generation Day6 official light band with customisable straps.”

\---

Later that evening, Younghyun stopped by Wonpil’s room to find him sitting cross-legged on the bed, typing rapidly on his laptop. 

“I am updating the Assembly,” Wonpil told him. “I will require their help to distribute the transmitters.” 

The Assembly, Younghyun was given to understand, was in fact a private Facebook group Wonpil had set up called ‘Extraterrestrial fans of ‘My Love From the Star’’. 

(“You can’t name it that,” Jae had said, back when Wonpil had first started it. “Everyone’s going to think it’s a joke account.”

“Nothing about this is a joke,” Wonpil had replied, hitting ‘accept’ on a request from a user named “keanu r.”,)

“So you’ll meet some of them while we’re on tour,” said Younghyun now, sitting down beside Wonpil on the bed while he composed his latest missive to what was, simultaneously, the mailing list for almost the entire alien diaspora on planet earth, and a bona fide fanpage for the 2013 drama starring Jun Ji-hyun and Kim Soo-hyun. 

“Yes, and Specialist Park will distribute the rest by courier,” Wonpil replied, shifting to make space for Younghyun. “I expect we will be able to transmit the message after the tour is over next year. And then my mission will be complete.”

He paused, and then hit ‘post’ on a message which, from what Younghyun could see, began incongruously with a picture of Kim Soo-hyun’s face. Then he steepled his fingers under his chin and stared, for a long moment, at the screen, before setting aside the laptop and flopping down onto his back. 

Younghyun glanced down at Wonpil. The expression on his face wasn’t particularly happy, for someone thinking about the completion of a long-delayed mission. 

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Younghyun ventured, lying down as well, wriggling a little so that his head didn’t hit the wall behind them. Their feet dangled off the side of the bed. “Finishing your mission.”

“Yes,” said Wonpil. 

For a moment they just lay there, listening to the ambient noise from the rest of the apartment: Jae talking excitedly in his room; Sungjin switching on the television. The microwave hum and the tap-tap-tap of Dowoon absently drumming his fingers on the kitchen counter as he waited for his food to heat up. 

Then Wonpil spoke. “At the next lunar alignment, I will return to spend my last phase in the Consciousness.” 

“You’ll... return?” Younghyun echoed. It was probably good that he was lying down, because he felt suddenly weightless, like he'd stumbled onto the edge of a chasm he hadn’t even known was there. 

“Do you remember what Dowoon said about the being he calls ‘Doraemon-hyung’?” asked Wonpil, turning his head to look at Younghyun.

“Dowoon,” said Younghyun, “has said a lot of things about Doraemon-hyung.”

“If he’s removed himself from the Consciousness for as many phases as I suspect he has,” said Wonpil, gazing back at the ceiling, “it wouldn’t just be difficult to return. It would be impossible.”

“But you haven’t been here as long,” said Younghyun, turning towards Wonpil, trying to keep the icy panic from his voice. “Hasn’t PD-nim been on Earth for much longer than you have?”

Wonpil shook his head. “Specialist Park has not lived through half as many phases as I have, and therefore he can withstand a longer separation.” 

“Will you ever come back?” asked Younghyun, feeling very much as if the air had been abruptly sucked from the room. 

Wonpil shrugged. “It seems unlikely.” Entirely unconsciously, he moved to press both his hands against his chest, right over his sternum. “When I received this assignment they had called me out of … I suppose in Earth terms it would be described as a retirement.” 

From what Wonpil had told them over the years, Younghyun had gathered that he hadn’t intended to stay longer than whatever brief time it would take to conduct and transmit the census report. And then months had turned into years, and Wonpil, caught up in his cover as a JYP trainee (“It was convenient,” Wonpil had explained), had inadvertently debuted. 

Wonpil sat up abruptly. “The next supervisor will take over my body and continue as Wonpil.”

“What about —” _your whole life here_ , Younghyun wanted to say. 

“What about the band?” he said instead.

From where Younghyun was lying, he thought he saw Wonpil’s shoulders sag. 

“When I reenter the Consciousness,” said Wonpil, “I suppose they will acquire my keyboard skills.” 

But even he didn’t sound convinced about this.

“I shall fill the bathtub now,” Wonpil announced, after pause. “I wish to sit in salt water and watch football on my phone.”

“Okay,” said Younghyun, around the leaden weight that was his chest, while Wonpil gathered his things and left the room. 

He remained on Wonpil’s bed for several long moments, trying to remember how to breathe. 

\---

If Younghyun were to be perfectly honest with himself, he would be compelled to admit that whatever it was he felt about Wonpil had been brewing for… well. 

Years, probably. 

When Younghyun had first met Wonpil he’d been just another kid in his school uniform, with a buzz cut and a bright smile; always hanging around Jinyoung. The other trainees had been baffled, at first, by his encyclopaedic knowledge of pop music from the Seo Taiji era and nothing else; the way he sometimes stared blankly when someone used slang he didn’t understand. 

Younghyun, who had been preoccupied with other concerns such as desperately learning to backflip, overcoming his bum knee, and generally not being a failure, hadn’t paid him much mind. Wonpil had had Jinyoung, after all, to fend off the worst of the teasing. 

Then they’d been thrown together in a group — an _acoustic band_ , the company had said, not without a good measure of uncertainty.

At first, it had been easy to justify the way his attention kept returning to Wonpil as some sort of attempt to be a good hyung; as wanting to get to know a group member. Wonpil had been the youngest, after all, and had possessed a profound sense of unbotheredness that Younghyun had found calming amidst the general ambient anxiety about debuting. Later, during the long, desperate season of songwriting, it had been Wonpil who’d been an anchor, with his genuine delight at _music_ in general; his seeming lack of fear every time they had to present their work for approval. 

Then Wonpil had revealed that his being from outer space was not merely a metaphor, and Younghyun had found himself increasingly fascinated by the contradiction that he was. 

How was it possible that he’d travelled light years through space and yet still genuinely thought they'd wind down the windows of the first aeroplane he'd ever sat in? How was it that he could, one moment, be commenting on a drama with the keen observational eye of a scientist, and the next, be surprised by his own tears mid-episode? In private, he’d speak to them in solemn, logical tones, different enough from the smiling, sweet Wonpil that at first they’d interpreted it as him attempting to hold them at arm’s length. And yet, during the long nights Younghyun had spent studying in the living room, he’d more often than not find Wonpil slipping out to keep him company.

Time had crept by, and Younghyun had glossed over whatever it was that he felt: why it was, exactly, that he always felt lighter when he looked across a room and caught Wonpil’s eye. Why he’d find himself turning, in a crowd, to see where Wonpil was. Why, while the others sometimes still puzzled over how to distinguish which Wonpil they were dealing with, Younghyun had simply — possibly irrationally — reconciled both as one and the same.

When he did think about it, it was with the abstract and now foolish hope that they could simply continue like this, the way two objects set loose in space might continue travelling indefinitely, unhindered by friction.

Now, with the knowledge that Wonpil was going to leave, however, it was as if a light had been switched on, throwing what had always been there into sharp relief. 

The perversity of finally being able to put words to it — as if he hadn’t already said this in some way or another, dozens and dozens of times in song — at precisely the point when it was too late, astounded Younghyun.

\---

Wonpil was packing in the living room when Younghyun returned to the dorm. From what Younghyun was able to make out, at least half of his suitcase was filled with packets of salt. 

“Pilie-ah,” said Younghyun.

Wonpil glanced up, and patted his stomach the way he sometimes did. 

“We can buy salt when we’re in America,” said Younghyun. “Different kinds of salt.” 

“Of course we can,” said Wonpil, staring up at Younghyun. “But these are souvenirs for my brethren.” 

“Oh, right,” said Younghyun. “Of course.”

He stood there for a while watching as Wonpil counted off the bags of salt on his fingers, matching them against some mental tally.

“I’ll carry some,” said Younghyun, after a beat, grabbing a few bags. “You need more room for your clothes.” 

“Thanks, hyung,” Wonpil said, in that tone halfway between the taffy soft one he used as Kim Wonpil and the regular, unaffectionate one he used in private. 

Younghyun nodded, and went off to try to rearrange his socks to make space for the salt. 

On the plane to New York the next day, Younghyun tried to imagine what it would be like to not have Wonpil around. 

If pop culture were to be believed, perhaps Wonpil would be beamed up in a column of light. More likely, though, perhaps he would say goodbye one night and go to bed, and the next morning be replaced by another, different Wonpil.

The idea of it was too much to bear. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried his best to stop the chasing, terrified scramble of his thoughts. 

“Hyung,” someone said softly. 

Younghyun opened his eyes. It was Wonpil, standing over Younghyun. He had the hood of his hoodie up with the drawstrings pulled tight, and a blanket draped over his head, presumably to block out any inadvertent illumination during the flight. In the dim cabin light, he looked a little bit like some triangular shaped creature of the deep. Even that made Younghyun’s chest twist. 

“… you were closing your eyes hard,” said Wonpil, because he had excellent night vision. 

“Was I,” croaked Younghyun.

“If it is too bright, you should use this,” he added, and produced an eye mask from the folds of his hoodie-blanket cloak. He tucked it over Younghyun’s forehead. 

And then, almost unthinkingly, he rested his hand on top of Younghyun’s head for a long moment. 

“Pilie,” Younghyun began, over the thudding of his heart, prepared to laugh it off if Wonpil decided this was some obscure, inscrutable joke of his.

“Ah,” said Wonpil, removing his hand to pat his stomach again. “I believe my body disagrees with flying.” and he made his shuffling way down the aisle towards the bathroom. 

\---

“What does it mean,” Younghyun had once asked Wonpil, “to not experience time linearly?"

He couldn't remember when exactly this had been — perhaps around the start of the _Every Day6_ project — only that it had been late enough that night for everything to become dreamlike in their cramped practice room. 

Wonpil had been softly working through the introduction of something, humming under his breath over each chord change. Younghyun had glanced up from his own notes to catch sight of the faint glow of Wonpil's head under his hoodie; the muted halo that surrounded his face. It had been, and still was, the ultimate tell as to whether Wonpil truly liked a song they were working on.

The question had slipped out before Younghyun had even had time to consider it. Wonpil had paused mid-chord, hands stilling. 

"Sorry," Younghyun had said automatically. "You don't have to answer that."

"No," Wonpil had replied. "I am simply thinking of a way to describe it."

After a moment, he had seemed to come to some sort of decision.

"I suppose the simplest explanation might be this — here is how we are experiencing linear time now," he'd said, before playing a series of broken chords, one note following the next. 

"But in the Consciousness, I experienced it more like this—"

He played the same notes in a chord now, each note sounding at the same time.

"All of it at once?" Younghyun had asked.

Wonpil had shrugged. "It feels both simultaneous and separate."

Perhaps, thought Younghyun now, it would feel something like how it felt on the first leg of the tour, when everything felt amplified and seemed to be experienced out-of-body and after the fact. 

In New York, the shock of their arrival: walking down Broadway to find fans shouting for them on the corner of the BUILD Studio; the too-fast rush of interview questions. Standing in the high-ceilinged Conde Nast office at One World Trade Centre and boggling at the view of the Hudson; coming out of his _Glamour-_ enforced friendship-building exercise with Sungjin to see Wonpil and Jae quietly conversing on the couch by the window, backlit by the late morning sun. Wonpil and Dowoon watching a video on Wonpil’s phone while finishing their whistle pops; how later, in the noontime heat, Wonpil had shrugged off his denim jacket as they walked down the street and tossed it over his shoulder.

In the spare pocket of free time they had, Wonpil went out with his transmitters (shipped together and then separated from the tour merch) and his bags of souvenir salt, carefully anonymous, with the same air of purpose as when he’d been in the throes of carrying out his census. For those long stretches Younghyun would nap fitfully, lying in the suite listening to the constant rhythmic tapping of Dowoon playing drum rudiments to a metronome. Would go to the hotel gym and tread blankly on the elliptical, each step effortful yet impactless like how he’d imagine walking in space might feel.

Invariably, Wonpil would appear in time for their sound check, and as the minutes ticked down from rehearsal to dressing room to them standing in the wings, silhouetted by light, Younghyun would feel the familiar frisson of excitement, as terrifying and exhilarating as the first time they’d ever done this. 

In those early showcases Wonpil used to fold his arms across his chest and tuck his hands under his armpits in an effort to stop them from shaking; so strange and foreign was the feeling of actual nerves to him. The first time Wonpil had cried onstage, he’d been as surprised as the rest of them, unable even to wipe at his eyes because he wouldn’t — couldn’t stop playing. 

After the second night of their first live concert, Younghyun remembered, he’d come out of the room he’d shared with Jae and Dowoon to find Wonpil lying flat on his back on the living room floor, arms and legs sprawled.

“My limbs feel strange,” Wonpil had said, still staring up at the ceiling. “Like they’re filled with electricity.” 

“I know,” Younghyun had replied, sitting down cross-legged by Wonpil’s left arm. 

“I want to go back there again,” Wonpil had murmured. “Playing our songs. The lights and smell of the hall.”

“Well, if we keep working hard, we’ll have plenty of concerts to play at,” Younghyun had replied.

“I’d like that,” Wonpil had said. Then, after a pause: “It’s one of the things that has made it bearable, you know.” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Playing music, and singing. It makes being here bearable.” 

Younghyun had looked down at Wonpil and wondered, not for the first time, exactly how far he’d journeyed, and what he’d left behind. 

Now, under the heat of the stage lights, in a hall filled with that specific concert-smell Wonpil so loved, Younghyun glanced over at Wonpil and remembered something else he'd said.

"The benefit of linear time," Wonpil had murmured that night, his voice dreamy and quiet, "is how the music sounds when you have to wait for the next note."

In Boston, while Wonpil was away, Younghyun went out to a specialty market and spent a good part of an hour looking at gourmet salts. 

Jae, who had followed along on the impression that Younghyun had intended to get snacks, had rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know why you’re trying it all when you _know_ Wonpil’s going to eat everything,” he said. “Also, have we lost Dowoon? I feel like we’ve lost him.” 

When Younghyun continued to study two different grades of chipotle salt, Jae punched him in the arm. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You seem really out of it.” 

“Yeah, it’s uh. Jet lag,” Younghyun mumbled. 

“Sure,” said Jae, entirely unconvinced. 

He was interrupted, however, by Dowoon reappearing before them with a pastrami sandwich.

“Why does it all taste the same?” Younghyun mumbled, around the mouthful of sandwich Dowoon insisted on feeding him, which was now tasteless on account of all the salt he’d just sampled. 

Younghyun presented the gourmet salt to Wonpil when he returned; watched him examine each package intently, before putting them away with great care. 

“How did it go?” he asked. 

“It was satisfactory,” said Wonpil, before breaking into a yawn. “I am tired.”

“There’s still half an hour to go before our sound check,” said Younghyun, and tried not to startle when Wonpil simply nodded and pulled his legs up onto the couch they were sitting on, sliding sideways so that he was curled up right beside Younghyun. If he’d moved just a fraction nearer, his head would have landed in Younghyun’s lap. 

\---

In Miami the weather was so good that they went out on their first night in shorts, Dowoon pausing after the first three minutes of walking to knot his sweater around his waist; Wonpil pulling off his cap for a few seconds while waiting to cross the road and fanning himself with it before jamming it back onto his head with the brim facing backwards. 

The next day Younghyun slept in, and emerged from his room to find that the others had, miraculously, woken up before him and gone for a swim. He stood watching them from the staircase landing overlooking the hotel pool, as Jae and Sungjin floated by the edge, and Wonpil paddled along in a leisurely fashion. 

“Join us,” Sungjin called, when he noticed Younghyun looking down at them. 

“Give me a minute,” Younghyun called back, before returning to his room to hunt for his trunks. 

In the time it took him to change and arrive downstairs, Wonpil had disappeared from the pool, leaving a trail of wet footprints evaporating on the stone tiles. He’d been replaced instead by Dowoon, who was in the process of hurling himself cannonball-style into the water.

“He had an appointment,” said Jae when he noticed Younghyun glancing around, over the sounds of Dowoon thrashing frantically away from a Sungjin in deadly but languid pursuit. 

After the pool, they ate a lazy lunch while idly speculating about who Wonpil might have gone to meet this time. 

“I keep imagining him in a trenchcoat smoking Cuban cigars with Jamie Foxx,” said Dowoon, clearly basing this off his garbled memory of one viewing of the 2006 _Miami Vice_ remake. 

“Jamie Foxx in the trenchcoat,” Jae corrected, “Wonpil in his shorts with an orange juice.” 

“Does he have to speak in English to all these American aliens,” Sungjin wondered. 

“I assumed they just opened their mouths to make those alien language sounds at each other,” said Jae. 

“Ah, that’s convenient,” said Dowoon. “Maybe I should have asked him to get autographs.”

“Did anyone bring more microwaveable rice,” asked Sungjin, looking up from his sandwich. 

“We’re less than a week into our tour,” Jae pointed out, but he turned to Younghyun anyway. “Didn’t you put some food in your suitcase?” 

Younghyun shook his head. “It’s all souvenir salt.” 

They spent the rest of the afternoon separately, Dowoon holing himself up in his room while Younghyun went wandering, enjoying the balmy weather, decidedly not wondering if he'd turn a corner and see Wonpil returning from his errands. 

"When will you tell the others?" asked Younghyun after, when they'd returned to the hotel after the concert. Wonpil had said something about wanting to go down to enjoy the pool again one last time before they got back on their bus the next morning, and Younghyun had pushed aside his own exhaustion to join Wonpil.

"In due course," Wonpil replied, holding his arms out in front of himself and watching, fascinated, at the way they floated on the surface of the water. "Perhaps when we have returned to Seoul."

_That's a long time to not be telling them_ , thought Younghyun, at the same time that he felt a private frisson of pleasure at the thought that of all of them, Wonpil had entrusted him with this information first. 

"Do you remember how long it took for Sungjin-hyung to come to terms with the fact that Specialist Park is an extraterrestrial?" asked Wonpil. He sounded serious, but when he glanced over at Younghyun he had a sly, almost mischievous look on his face. "I'm afraid the shock this time might be too much for him."

Younghyun laughed, and watched as Wonpil sank into the water, submerging his head beneath the surface for several long seconds. 

When he emerged, shaking off the water from his head, his hair in dripping curls around his face, Younghyun was overcome, all of a sudden, by how badly he wanted to touch him. 

"Your head's lit up," Younghyun said instead, voice hoarse. 

Wonpil clapped his hands on top of his head and ducked down into the water again, swimming along the edge of the pool in slow, careful strokes, visible still to Younghyun by the way his head glowed under the surface like the reflection of the sun. In a moment of unthinking impulse Younghyun found himself reaching forward in the water as if to gather the refracted glimmers of that light, with nothing to show for it but his pruning fingers.

\---

In desperation, Younghyun called the only person he could think of who might understand. 

“If you’re asking about whether I’d be prepared to courier you extra salt, my answer is no,” said Jinyoung when he answered the phone.

“No, I — what?” Younghyun said. “Why would I call you about salt?”

“Did he show you his souvenir list?” Jinyoung replied. “It’s _long_.” 

According to legend (probably just Jinyoung), the first human to discover Wonpil’s secret had been Park Jinyoung, then an unsuspecting trainee fresh from winning that JYP competition and still desperately shedding his _satoori_. Wonpil had apparently walked up to Jinyoung in the JYP building and said: “Park Jinyoung, your performance here has been suboptimal.” 

“No he hasn’t,” said Younghyun now, “and that’s not what I’m calling about —”

“Is his mission going badly, then?” asked Jinyoung, seemingly bent on not actually letting Younghyun speak. “I’ve been informed by my spies that PD-nim was recently spotted personally supervising the delivery of extra My Day wristbands, and also that he’s been extra jumpy of late.” 

“Could the jumpiness be because of something else,” Younghyun offered. “Isn’t Itzy going on tour…”

“How on earth — or the general universe at large — is _Itzy’s tour_ on the same level as setting up a dial-up connection to a separate galaxy?” asked Jinyoung. 

“Uh—” 

“Also,” Jinyoung continued, “you can’t truly grasp the concept of Wonpil outranking PD-nim by several thousand light years or whatever, until you’ve stumbled upon them sitting in the basement salt bath facility at the company building, swaddled in towels while Wonpil calmly tells him everything he’s done wrong over the background spa soundtrack of Rain’s greatest hits — the unreleased easy listening versions, mind you.” 

“I know,” said Younghyun, who had heard Jinyoung’s account of this several times now, once even with Wonpil present and calmly correcting all of Jinyoung’s flourishes and exaggerations. “Wonpil was using banmal... PD-nim was crying... you ran away as fast as you could.”

“Ugh, I just shuddered thinking about it,” said Jinyoung. 

“Right,” said Younghyun. “But has he said anything to you before about… returning to his planet? How he felt about it?” 

“Have you ever heard him talk about his feelings before?” Jinyoung countered. “Properly, I mean. And outside of his ‘I’m Kim Wonpil, isn’t melting and boiling point the same’ persona.” 

It was true that whatever glimpses Wonpil had given Younghyun about what he was feeling tended to be somewhat limited, and never expressed or elaborated on in a way that made human sense. 

There was, for instance, that time Younghyun had been convinced Wonpil had been nursing some sort of misplaced crush on Sungjin. It hadn’t just been the music video trilogy — in which Wonpil had taken a rather interesting interpretation of what the director had said — but also everything else: the valiant attempts to interact with Sungjin and to demonstrate affection in a way that only served to repel him. 

Younghyun had spectated until he couldn’t any longer; had looked up one night from his books and turned to Wonpil, who had been keeping him company in the living room. 

“Are you okay?” Younghyun had asked, and when Wonpil had squinted quizzically at him, he’d added, “You and Sungjin-hyung. Do you — is there something that’s bothering you?” 

Wonpil had given him a blank look. “We have not had any altercations.” 

“No, I mean — I thought — uh,” Younghyun had paused, unsure of how to say it. “I thought you might have… feelings for him.” 

There had been a terrible pause in which Wonpil had considered this, and Younghyun had considered all the ways he could leave the country and assume a new identity forever. 

“I simply thought I’d try to be friendlier to Sungjin-hyung,” Wonpil had said, eventually. “He has been having a stressful time, and Jinyoungie disclosed Specialist Park’s true identity to him the other day, which has somewhat thrown him for a loop.” 

“Oh,” Younghyun had said, surprised by the relief spilling in his chest. “You were trying to be… friendly.”

“Yes,” Wonpil had replied. “Like how hyung is friendly. But I have concluded that Sungjin-hyung would be happiest simply having a quiet roommate and a sufficiently high level of cleanliness in the common spaces, which is why I have taken to cleaning the microwave instead.” 

“I guess he doesn’t process things the way we might,” said Younghyun now. 

“All things considered, though,” said Jinyoung. “I’d imagine he wants to go back. Based on everything he’s said before.”

In the early years, Younghyun would sometimes look over at Wonpil to find him squinting at his hands like he wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do with them. In 2016, when he’d gotten that heart tattoo on his finger, Younghyun had asked him why. 

“It’s the two things I’ve had the most trouble with,” Wonpil had said. “Hands, and the heart.” He’d paused, and made a little amused sound. “I suppose, more accurately, I should have gotten a human brain.”

“Because that’s where our thoughts and feelings originate?” Younghyun had asked.

Wonpil had nodded. “It would have been harder to draw and to explain. And besides —” here he’d paused; put his hand over his heart and looked over at Younghyun with a sincerity that had made Younghyun’s own heart do a little leap. “This is where the discomfort manifests itself.”

“This is how humans know they are alive?” Wonpil had added, softer this time, leaving Younghyun with a considerable amount discomfort manifesting in his own chest.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm just yeeting this into the world but rest unassured that I have the rest of this fic outlined!!!! one day!!! soon!!!! it will be finished!!! 
> 
> This idea began w me telling forochel that I would probably never write a full social media AU unless it was an assemblage of facebook posts by kim wonpil, alien, trying his best to organise an alien Annual General Meeting. And then of course this spawned an entire outline featuring no social media whatsoever fml 
> 
> Huge huge thanks to forochel for being the absolute best cheer-reader and idea-bouncer-offer and fount of day6 chronology and, most crucially, purveyor of pictures in which she has drawn in the faint glow of wonpil's head. 
> 
> title from Changes by Langhorne Slim & The Law. 
> 
> come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bysine2) I just reblog dowoon's face mostly.


End file.
